Android may finally be on the handset of your dreams, but it’s too late for mobile game developer Gameloft. The french developer said it has significantly cut its investment in the Android platform due to underwhelming revenues.
“It is not as neatly done as on the iPhone. Google has not been very good to entice customers to actually buy products. On Android nobody is making significant revenue,” said Gameloft’s finance director, Alexandre de Rochefort. There must be a bit of meaning lost in translation of the word “neatly” from french to english because I would hardly call the App Store neat. That’s not to say the decision doesn’t make sense.
According to Rochefort, Gameloft is selling 400 times the number of apps on the App Store as on Android devices. Obviously there are a lot of factors to consider, market share being prime among them. But even if market share were closer I’d imagine Gameloft would struggle with the number of different devices Android runs. With so much different hardware it’s just easier to design apps for the iPhone/iPod Touch and support them.
Source: Washington Post
